Invasive Species
by Besprizornye
Summary: The introduction of a new species of pokémon is introduced into a fragile ecosystem portends disaster for two scyther who must defend their home from this new danger.


"What do you got for us today, Mitch?" asked the man sitting behind a desk, his fishing magazine lowered only as far as it needed to be for him to address the deliveryman.

"A little more than usual, Rodney. The Vermillion police intercepted a whole shipment of pinsir that were on their way out of the country," Mitch replied as he halted his open-topped cart full of red and white poké balls and pulled a small electronic tablet out from one of the many pockets of his dull gray uniform. The proffered device was taken by the worker grudgingly as Mitch continued, "My guess is that the recent raids have made the Rockets desperate, that they're looking for friends overseas, y'know?"

Rodney mumbled some noncommittal reply and signed the electronic pad without reading it. "Here you go."

"You have a good one."

The deliveryman departed, but his arrival had already thrown off what was supposed to be a perfectly carefree day. Rodney had agreed to take this job because it seemed more likely than not that he would be getting paid to basically do nothing; after all, how many bug pokémon did people care about enough to send them all the way here? The answer, apparently, was enough that this was the fourth time that Mitch had darkened the office's doorway in the last three months, each time with a new collection of bug pokémon that had to be meticulously tagged and logged before being introduced into the wilds of the island.

It was not difficult work by any means, but with a shipment this size, it would likely take up the whole morning just verifying and entering the content of each of those damned capsules. That would be followed, after a lengthy lunch break of course, by talking to his supervisor and getting the whole matter passed up the chain of command until each of these pokémon could be assured of a place in the preserve that took up most of Murcott Island. All of that work would cut into precious reading, napping, and daydreaming time. Unless…

Mitch had said that all of the pokémon he had brought in were pinsir, right? Rodney plucked one of the red and white spheres out from the cart and tried to remember what had been said, but, truth be told, he had not been paying attention to his unwanted guest. In addition to providing the number for the database, the white label stuck to the top of the poké ball gave its gender and species: male Pinsir. If all of these new arrivals were one kind of pokémon, and the more he thought about it the more certain he was that Mitch had conveyed this fact, then his data entry duties could be kept to the barest minimum with judicious use of copying and pasting. Then the call could be made. After he finished this article, had his lunch, and maybe took a nap, of course. There was no point in taking the easy way out if it just got you more work in the end.

With his foul mood significantly ameliorated by this development, Rodney began to whistle a simple tune as he put in the information from the poké ball in his hand into the program used to request placement of new pokémon in the preserve. With a few simple keystrokes, he got the list to be populated a two-hundred times over, the number of creatures held inside the cart. At least, that's what Rodney thought he remembered reading on the tablet he had signed. It wasn't important. After all, the staff at the Murcott Pokémon Preserve were notoriously bad at keeping track of the wide array of bug pokémon that they were responsible for. No matter how much money was spent on elaborate computer programs and countless manhours, no one had any idea how many caterpie could dance on the head of a pin, much less how many were on the island.

Rodney was about to lean back and enjoy his ill-deserved relaxation when a thought struck him. He reached back over to his desktop and tapped a few keys in a short rapid burst. After a few seconds of delay, half of the entries on the online form were changed to being labeled as female. That close call averted, the man leaned back on his cheap swivel chair. Maybe he would take his nap first, he thought, content with a job poorly done.

* * *

A few weeks later, two scythe were racing through the forest together, dodging effortlessly around the century-old trunks as well as more recent additions to this natural obstacle course. Glaive was a few feet ahead of his more cautious brother, but Sickle was still keeping pace. Journeys like this were a long-standing ritual for the two, the details of which had long ago become so engrained as to be considered instinctual. For two young scythe, in a world practically untouched by human ambitions or follies they seemed invincible, heady not only with their innate speed and power but also with the rush that came from adolescence. Furthermore, they had one another; a rare certainty in the chaotic wilds of Murcott Island.

This camaraderie was unusual in packs of scyther, hatched as they are from communal clutches, but for whatever reason, the emergence of the two hatchlings from their eggs at roughly the same time engendered a powerful bond between the pair. Glaive had hatched first, a harbinger of what was to become a clear pattern in the duo's activities. One would rush ahead, heedless of the risks, always excited for what lay just beyond the horizon. The other hung back, more mindful of the moments and places he found himself in. This partnership served them well. When the older scyther claimed the best prey for themselves and drove the rest away, it was Glaive who convinced Sickle to explore beyond their pack's usual hunting grounds and found an untouched meadow where they ate until, for the first time in their lives, they felt full. And when Glaive's disrespect almost cost him his life in an honor duel with a youth from a visiting pack's delegation, it was Sickle who convinced the pack leader to exert her influence and stop the fight, although not before his younger sibling had received a number of service wounds that hardened into nasty-looking scars.

Incidents like those seemed to widen a rift between the brothers and the rest of their pack. That, in turn, seemed to spark their willingness to venture out on their own, each time traveling further and further from the collection of nests that were the epicenter of the pack's holdings.

Of course, all healthy scyther venture outside of the safety of the nests in their youth, acquiring the skills necessary for proper practice of the vicious and ruthless hunting tactics of the species through roughhousing, racing, and hunting smaller pokémon. But for Glaive and Sickle, their journeys were driven by a kind of inherent wanderlust that chafed under the authority of the older members of the pack. Few of their broodmates would have made an overnight journey to see a waterfall, at least not before they were assuaged repeatedly that there was a very ripe selection of game at the location. But the two brothers did just that, and even stayed for in the area for a few days even though the supply of food was scarce and they were technically trespassing on another pack's land. They were deemed strange by most, but they did not care. While they never have been considered normal, as long as they had each other they would never be alone.

On this particular day, they had set off in the early afternoon with no destination or schedule in mind. They were flying through the forest for its own sake, reveling in their freedom and daring one another to top his latest maneuver. With the wind whipping past their faces, it was not always easy to hear the exact words, but the sound of laughter or the tone of friendly challenge cut through the noise as cleanly as any scyther's blade could. Neither one was keeping track of time, so it could have been anywhere from half-an-hour to an hour after they set out that they encountered the first clue that something was not right in the vast forest.

It was a pinsir, brazenly standing in the middle of a small clearing. Upon sighting the other pokémon, Glaive felt his body tense and his blood warm. He passed a warning along to Sickle and the two powerfully-built pokémon slowed to a stop and swung around behind a small cluster of young trees, hopefully out of sight of their potential foe.

"What do we do?" Glaive asked as soon as they were both on the ground.

"Should we turn back?" offered Sickle, although he was fairly certain the idea would be rejected by his brother on principle.

They debated in hushed tones for a little while longer, all the while stealing glances at the pinsir who stood glittering in the early afternoon sunlight streaming through the canopy. Suddenly, however, the discussion was cut off completely as Glaive darted out from behind the tree and buzzed up to the pokémon.

"Glaive! What are you doing?" When there was no response, the other scyther reluctantly joined his brother in the place where the trees opened. As soon as he was in spitting distance, Sickle hissed his question again, "What are you doing?"

The scarred pokémon had taken one of his wicked-looking blades and reached out to tap the back of the pinsir's head with it. As soon as he made contact, Glaive sprung backwards and dropped into a fighting stance. But the other pokémon did not move. This merited a closer investigation and so Glaive began poking and prodding the stout creature in other places, much to his sibling's consternation. When the curious Scyther knocked on the tip of the immobile pokémon's studded horn, it came off with a crack that echoed throughout the quiet area and fell to the ground.

"Let's just get out of here," moaned Sickle, but the other scyther was not listening to him.

"Look! Ice, Sickle!"

"What? That's impossible!"

The two Scyther had heard tale of the strange phenomenon of frozen water before from a pack member who had once been owned by humans or from talk among species who migrated from island to island, but on Murcott, with its tropical climate, such a thing was unthinkable. Yet, as Sickle inspected the rigid pinsir, he could not help but notice the similarities between the translucent cool-to-the-touch substance that coated it and the properties that he had heard of in stories that he had once dismissed as mere tall tales.

But if there was really ice here, where did it come from?

"Do you want to keep looking around?" Sickle asked. No answer was needed, the excitement on his brother's pointed face said it all. The pair began looking around, expanding their search outward from the frozen pinsir. It did not take long for them to make more strange discoveries that went beyond the chilled forms of more bug pokémon and trees.

A huge monolith of ice and snow had been cobbled together, stitched between the trunks and branches of now-lifeless oaks and willows. It was a bizarre structure, semi-cylindrical and ridged with a spiraling path of blue-white ice dotted intermittently with cavernous entrances and exits. The two scyther stood in front of the column of unnatural cold, awe-struck by just what they were seeing.

"What is it?" gasped Sickle when he caught up with his brother.

Before Glaive could respond, the eerie quiet was broken by a harsh buzzing sound of a much higher pitch than that made by the siblings' wings and by a sudden blast of energy aimed directly at the two gawking pokémon.

Neither of them had to think before their instincts kicked in. Diving out of the way in two near-identical green blurs, Glaive and Sickle narrowly avoided the narrow beam that froze the ground that they had been standing on solid. No sooner had they fully registered that they were under attack when another blast came from above. All the time the buzzing sound grew louder and louder.

"Take to the sky!" Glaive shouted before following his own advice. "We'll have more room to maneuver!" The second salvo went wide as well, and the brothers were finally afforded the chance to gaze upon their attacker.

It was a pokémon unlike any that they had ever seen before. Its body was segmented into three parts, all covered by a sickly mint green exoskeleton. Four small legs were folded up tight against its abdomen, but from its thorax sprouted two more powerful limbs, curved backwards into elbow spikes and tipped by a triangular arrangement of three small white claws, in the center of which was a cone of blue crystal. Its three pairs of wings were similarly semi-translucent and beat at a furious rate in order to keep their owner aloft. Its head was elongated, its smooth surface offset only by two small antennae and a set of white mandibles that hung beneath the strange pokémon's cold blue eyes.

While Glaive and Sickle were taking in the bizarre form of their enemy, said pokémon was wasting no time in lining up its next assault. As soon as its bulbous body righted itself in the air, the mint green foe pointed its more powerful forearms at each of its fellow fliers. The crystals at the end of each limb glowed briefly and then let off two lines of energy that streaked through the still air. Sickle dodged this attack by dropping sharply while Glaive avoided his through a flashier display of flying in a dangerously tight spiral around the beam.

"Are you okay, Glaive?"

"Yeah, I'm fine! But we've gotta get closer if we want to hit this guy."

Fortunately, the strange pokémon was not as graceful a flyer as its opponents. While the two scyther could dart through the air in short, sharp bursts and change direction with only a little bit of effort, its bulbous body and smaller wings left the mint green pokémon's movements sluggish. As the brothers split up, its task became monumentally harder, as two fast-moving targets were far harder to track than one.

Glaive was drawing its attention with a series of quick darting feints that lingered just long enough for the ice-manipulating pokémon to line up its forearms for a clean shot before zipping off in another direction at a safer distance. While that distraction was going on, Sickle had managed to put the artificial mountain of ice between him and his target, utilizing years of training to stay out of sight just long enough to get in position for the perfect strike.

The buzz of his wings must have been loud enough to be heard over the wine of his enemy's weaker ones, however, because the misshapen pokémon turned to face its assailant a bare instant before Sickle struck.

Time slowed to a crawl. Sickle raised one of his curved blade as he barreled forward. The pokémon he was charging rotated its body towards him, antennae first, then head, then torso. He brought his arm down in a powerful swipe. The blue-white crystals on the tip of its two decently-sized forearms began to glow with energy. Sickle's blade effortlessly cleaved through the creature's vestigial arms on one side of its body.

The maimed pokémon began spasming with its white-fanged mandibles gibbering hysterically and its whole body lurching drunkenly from side to side, rotating even as the injured flier tried to right itself. The energy gathered in anticipation of an attack had not dissipated with this dismemberment, but was rather released in a haphazard series of bursts. Coupled with the erratic, unpredictable movements of the beams' wielder, it would have been a confusing salvo to dodge even if Glaive had not been distracted by cheering for his brother's successful hit.

But he had been, and so the slightly older Scyther found one of his wings coated with a creeping cold layer of ice and began plummeting to the earth as the struck wing slowed its beating before stopping completely.

Sickle forgot his opponent and broke into a steep dive after his brother's falling form. He was fast, but not fast enough. The other scyther struck the ground, catching himself on the shoulder that was on the same side of his body as the now frozen wing. Bruised and cursing from the pain, Glaive rose shakily to his feet, shrugging off the attempts by his sibling to help him.

"I'm fine," he growled after he batted away Sickle's efforts for the third time. "Just can't fly." Glaive paused. "And I've gotta figure out how to fight unbalanced like this."

Their interaction had been observed with some interest by the still airborne pokémon which had caused the injury. It was bleeding out a clear viscous-looking substance from the stumps where two of its lower arms had been, but the initial panic at losing them seemed to have worn off. Its mouth clicked together indecipherably, and then it raised its arms again, pushing the crystal-tipped appendages together as the gems began to glow.

The two scyther split up again, with Sickle only taking to the sky after he made sure that his brother was moving alright. A wide blast of energy erupted from their enemy and began erecting a low wall of ice as the wounded pokémon firing the attack followed Glaive's serpentine path, coming to an end only when he crossed behind the intricate cone-shaped pillar of ice that their battle was centered on and began to climb the smooth surface of the path leading up to the top.

This time, the ice-wielding pokémon menacing the brothers did not let the retreating Scyther out of its sight, but rather followed the curve of the frozen monolith and the green pokémon racing around it. For the moment at least, no further blasts of ice were being launched. Instead, the flying pokémon was studying its crippled prey with those emotionless blue eyes, tearing them away only to cast a wary aside glance at the other Scyther, who was now airborne as well.

Sickle's face was curled into a snarl of anger, showing off a number of his needle-sharp teeth, but he did not attack. Despite its bulbous form, the pokémon he was facing was deceptively maneuverable, and another ineffectual attack like the last one, flashy as it may have been, would leave Sickle and his brother open to a deadly counterattack.

The same calculation seemed to be going on in whatever brain the scyther's foe possessed. For the time being, they were at an impasse.

This state of affairs could not last forever. Due to its tropical climate, snow and ice were practically unheard of in much of the Orange Archipelago, limited only to the peaks of mountains or the landmass where the legendary Articuno resided. As a result, even with some of the limited shade provided by the forest's trees, enough of the equatorial sun was beating down that the artificial pillar of ice had only a sharply limited lifespan.

For the most part, this onslaught of heat and light bore no obvious effect beyond the heavy sweating of condensation down the steep frozen walls, but underneath the surface, the structure's integrity was beginning to weaken ever so slightly, especially around the honeycomb series of openings that dotted it.

It was at one of these caves that the mint green stranger launched an attack. This time, instead of letting loose with a full-blown beam of ice, the pokémon let out just a slight stream of energy with a barely audible hiss. The beam coalesced at the end of one of the airborne pokémon's arms into a solid cone of ice, and then the dart was fired at the top of the hollow. The impact sent a deluge of ice tumbling down on Glaive's head.

The stunned scyther only had time to chance one quick glance at his attacker preparing another frozen dart at the cliff above his head before he had to act. Maybe he panicked, or maybe he thought that there was another way out. But whatever his reasoning may have been, Glaive made the fateful decision to take refuge in one of the caves himself.

Without any warning more than a wave of his foe's arm, Sickle found himself swerving to avoid the absent-mindedly fired his way. Then, to his horror, he saw the mint green insectoid pokémon draw closer to the cave that Glaive had disappeared into and ready itself for another strike.

"No!"

Without thinking, Sickle slammed hard into the dangerous pokémon's side, driving the pair of them along the side of the mountain. The two of them scraped against the slick, unyielding surface, crushing bone, wing, and carapace alike. While the move halted the planned blow, the cost was high.

Although the rough ride had shredded the half of his enemy's wings on the side of the wall, forcing the arthropod to land on the same winding path that Glaive had raced up mere minutes before, Sickle was in hardly a better state. He had driven his shoulder into the other pokémon too sloppily, and the impact and prolonger journey of the limb against the wall of ice seemed to have bruised the bone. Like his foe, the scyther's wings had been scratched and torn by the small imperfections in the monolith and he had been brought earthbound as well.

There was no time to linger on his injuries, however. The other creature had rolled over and was now skittering towards the mouth of the cave that Glaive had disappeared into, moving with surprising speed given its wounds and missing limbs. With only a slight groan acknowledging his pain, Sickle gave chase.

The narrow tunnel inside was surprisingly well-lit due to the translucence of the structure, but the same icy material had a reflective quality that made the younger scyther's head swim as he plunged into the unknown.

The battle had already resumed by the time that he entered the cavern, with Glaive's wickedly-sharp blades being matched against the twin spikes of blue-white ice that had grown out of the crystals tipping his foe's forearms. The clash of blade on saber rang throughout the shaft. What may have once been considered an advantage in terms of size was now reduced to liability as Glaive found himself hunched over and ineffective at waging the kind of close-range battle that the claustrophobic space demanded of him. Furthermore, evolved as his species was to hunt in the tropical conditions of an open savannah or deep jungle, the scyther was unable to gain purchase on the icy surface underneath his clawed feet, while his adversary seemed to have no trouble with holding its ground.

At first the arrival of Sickle seemed to presage a reversal to this uneven affair, but the new addition to the battle was hampered by the same disadvantages as his ally. The two brothers' outnumbered opponent shifted its fighting style easily to counter this new balance of power, pushing Glaive off and constantly keeping him struggling to keep his balance and close the distance between him and his foe while slowly ceding ground to Sickle's advance. The tactic was both exhausting the scyther's at a minimal cost of energy to their mint-green enemy and bringing all of the warring parties deeper into the depths of the melting edifice.

The combatants were caught in a cycle that seemed as though it might go on forever, with Glaive finding himself pushed further and further along a dizzying network of catacombs. The only one with any idea where the twisting journey would end was the system's creator, who seemed to be directing his foes with the effortless ease of a master orchestra conductor. Though no words passed between them, both scyther had a sinking feeling that their trek was not a random one.

Sure enough, the light streaming into the tunnel became stronger as the trio approached a different exit to the outside. The insectoid pokémon lunged at Glaive again and pushed him back again, driving him to his knees just underneath the portal. Then, it raised up one of its weapons at the mouth of the cave and prepared to fire.

Sickle tried to seize upon the distraction and closed his blades around the other frozen saber and pulled backwards. The scyther's grappling was ineffective until he lost his footing on the icy ground and fell backwards. With all of his weight added to the equation, Sickle finally managed to pull his enemy off of its feet, toppling the mint-green pokémon backwards, just as it fired off its unencumbered weapon at Glaive.

Thrown off balance, the attack went wide, with the projectile driven a yard off target, burrowing deep into the tunnel's ceiling. The missile tore through the weakened structure with surprising ease. A rough and jagged collection of shards rained down on the two pokémon wrestling deeper inside of the tunnel.

While his foe was trying to pull away, Sickle maintained his hold, even as the shower of frozen debris bruised and battered them. Glaive could only watch as the two other pokémon were obscured under a heavy stream of rubble until the tunnel was filled up to ceiling and Sickle and his enemy stopped moving and were still.

For several seconds, the surviving scyther caught his breath and rose shakily to his feet. He was alone, and the cave was quiet. Slowly, he approached the caved-in portion of the tunnel, his eyes studying the parts of the two crushed pokémon that were still visible among the wreckage.

"You killed my brother," spat Glaive at the still-visible head of the crushed pokémon that had menaced him and killed his brother, and began to dig Sickle out from under the pile of ice that had fallen on the two of them.

"Brother?" the mint-green pokémon clicked curiously.

The sudden sound and motion made Glaive jump. "You're alive? You can talk?"

"That-unit and you-unit were hivemates?" the trapped creature asked again, but there was no urgency or desperation in its voice, nothing that signaled that it was in any way concerned with being trapped underneath a prison of frozen rubble. For all of its casualness, it may as well have been talking about the weather.

"Yeah, I guess he was."

The tunnel was silent save for the scraping of Glaive's blades on the ice and the clicking of his only company's mandibles as it digested this information. When it spoke, its voice was still free of any anger or fear, but the words still sent shivers down Glaive's spine. "Then you-unit will understand what will happen to you-unit."

"What will happen to me?"

"This-unit is Cyclant drone number three-hundred-and-ten of colony gamma. Killing this-unit was an act of war against this-unit and all of this-unit's colony." When Glaive did not say anything, the mint-green pokémon continued, "This-unit's death pheromones will bring this-unit's hive-mates here. It may take a number of day cycles; this-unit is not familiar with this area's climate and weather patterns. But the colony will find this-unit and the colony will find you-unit and the colony will kill you-unit and you-unit's entire hive to the very last grub-unit."

Once the shock of the threat had passed, Glaive plunged one of his blades into the cyclant's head, right between its cold blue eyes. The slain pokémon slumped a little bit when the weapon was removed from his head with a sickening squelch, but that was it. Glaive was left alone in the artificial tunnel with two dead pokémon.

He redoubled his efforts at carving his sibling out of the collapsed section of the cave, the monotonous work let his mind race with the implication of what he had been told. By the time that enough of Sickle's crushed and mangled body was uncovered so that Glaive could drag him out, the scyther had decided on a course of action. He would warn the rest of his pack. They might not listen to him, not after his history of butting heads with the others, but he had to try. If one cyclant could do this much damage and kill this many pokémon, then what would an army of them do?

In fact, all of the scyther packs could be in danger. All of the pokémon on the island, even. Someone had to warn them, Glaive thought as he tugged his fallen brother's corpse out of the icy make-shift mountain and started down after shifting the body onto the flats of his blades. He was the only one who could.

A little more than halfway down the winding path, Glaive realized that he was lurching to one side on account of his still frozen wing. He shifted his brother's weight to rest more on his good side, and he realized something. Sickle was dead, and he was always going to be dead. That had to mean something.

* * *

**Cyclant is a product of Smogon's "Create-a-Pokémon Project", and is not an original creation of mine.**


End file.
